New Bedford, Massachusetts is a city that is challenged by almost every measure. It has one of the highest unemployment rates in the state and the lowest rate of insured employees. It leads the state in rates of obesity, heart problems and diabetes cancer related to lifestyle. Problems with substance abuse, gang activity and teen violence abound.
But it is a proud city, with a history that every school child knows: New Bedford was the richest city in the United States in the early-to-mid-1880s, when it was home port to more than a hundred whale ships. In those days, New Bedford was The City that Lit the World.
As the whales disappeared, however, ships traveled farther to hunt them and in the late 1800s the New Bedford fleet was lost in the Arctic. By then, oil had already been discovered in Pennsylvania and so rather than invest in new whaling ventures, the owners of the lost ships invested their insurance money in textile mills.
For the next 40 years or so, New Bedford was a textile capital, employing tens of thousands of immigrants in mills that had the latest technology for the time. For decades following the boom, the industry weathered strikes, industrial migration to the south and growing international competition before it collapsed in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Left behind were rows and rows of empty, brick mill buildings and extensive industrial pollution. PCBs were found in the fish in the Port of New Bedford, which in 1983was declared a Superfund site.
Commercial fishing remains a bright spot for New Bedford, where the fleet every year lands the most valuable catch in the United States. But concern about shrinking fish stocks arose in the 1980s. (At least, that’s when discussion about the issue started. Evidence of depleting fish stocks goes back to the 1860s.) The government has responded with increasing regulation that has driven independent fishermen out of the business. Unfortunately, the regulations have so far been largely ineffective in restoring fish.
As the city’s fortunes slid, so did the quality of the schools. The district of 12,000 students now includes a high school and an elementary school that have the state’s lowest ranking. As a result, the district is in a state-mandated turnaround.
The current leader of the turnaround is the district’s third superintendent in five years. She is a reform-minded “outsider” who says the district’s adults abdicated their responsibility to educate students. Teachers with the best political connections, rather than the best qualifications, were hired. And if they didn’t work out, they were passed from school to school, in what the state called “the dance of the lemons,” rather than held to account. The schools with the poorest students and the highest percentage of minorities ended up with the greatest number of low performing teachers.
The superintendent is under close scrutiny by the state and has strict goals to meet if she is to keep the district out of state receivership, which means she would no longer be able to run the schools and the state would take over. But the teacher’s union is powerful and resistant to change. Many in the union believe they can outlast her, as they have the last two superintendents, and they have allies on the city council.
The superintendent is determined not to go, however. And she is working with me to help her improve her communications with the City Council, parents and teachers.
I am just starting this project and feel privileged to be involved so closely with such an fascinating and important undertaking. I have been re-reading Dr. Bowen’s papers and noting quotes that I think are pertinent.
I quote and paraphrase them below:
The hypothesis postulates that man’s increasing anxiety is a product of populations explosion, the disappearance of new habitable land to colonize, the approaching depletion of raw materials necessary to sustain life, and growing awareness that “spaceship earth” cannot indefinitely support human life in the style to which man and his technology have become accustomed.
Operationally, the vocal segment of society is in the position of the anxious teenager who is driven by anxiety and who is demanding rights, and the public official is in the position of the unsure parents who give in to allay the anxiety of the moment.”
In a regression, the norm of society in business, the professions, in government and social institutions gradually falls to the levels that match the regression.
“Society’s emotional reactiveness in dealing with societal problems is similar to the years of slow build-up of an emotional breakdown in a family.”
“Regression occurs when the family, or society, begins to make important decisions to allay the anxiety of the moment.”
“The anxiety that starts regression appears to be related more to a disharmony between man and nature than to disharmony between man and his fellow man, such as war.”
Barbara,
Thank you for this interesting article. I like the telling of history of the town. The facts are compelling. I’m unsure what kind of feedback you may be looking for here. I do hear the tendency to take sides and to blame the other that is characteristic of us humans when we face a stressful environment. The instinct to take sides and blame is so automatic in all of us in my view that it can be difficult even for a principled leader like the superintendent to reach out to the differentiation which lies within all the people involved. Thank you for this late post that is well worth reading. It’s a good example of the kind of daily societal struggles that it seems the theory is made for as a guide forward. I wish you all the best with your efforts with this real-life problem, and I believe you will make a contribution there.
Thanks for your response, Laurie. I had hoped to have some more experience with the superintendent before I wrote this, but snow days got in the way. So I thought I’d just get the bare bones down anyway. It is so hard to lead these days under the best of circumstances. And I want to think about how theory might guide one through a seemingly intractable situation with many emotional cross currents and traceable roots.
Barbara:
This will be a fascinating opportunity to observe how the system functions and perhaps teach the value of self-regulation. How do some communities end up in these one down positions with most of the resources ( equipment, better teachers etc) going to the better functioning communities. What would happen if a better functioning community could connect with a poorer functioning community in a meaningful way? A lot of people stay clear of these underperforming communities …..they act like it is contagious. And then there is the reactivity to the threat (lack of resources) by the parents, city council and union….which keeps the community in a state of sustained anxiety and reactivity. Little gets accomplished due to the reactivity as we see very clearly in our capitol. Of course the reactivity is not limited to New Bedford. How does the larger group keep New Bedford in this position.
Barbara,
I am thinking along the same lines as Laurie. The historical context is important to give an understanding of the level of chronic anxiety now focused on the school system. The superintendent is in the position of a focus child in the family, under pressure to deliver results quickly while subject to scrutiny and criticism. In addition to the passages you quote from Bowen on regression, his book offers rich guidance to the process of differentiation which is an avenue out of regression. If the superintendent can connect with the City Council, parents and teachers around the common ground that unites them, she can avoid the pitfalls of an adversarial climate. Somewhere among the comments in this session of Festwg, some one pointed to Pope Francis as an example of how not to get caught in the polarization.
Best wishes in this important work.